Sunday, September 13, 2009

It's been a while.

So, DI published "An open letter to our ignorant student body" this Friday, and begat a comment shitstorm. Most of the comments, predictably, were of the "nuh-uh" and "who do you think you are" variety. One, however, stood out:

Students don't care because their voice doesn't matter. It won't bring back the chief or the things that made the university great. Who cares anymore if the university becomes a ****hole. More likely than not, the reason why my best friend didn’t get in here with his perfect ACT score is because of the high percentage of international students. Hey I have got an idea, let's raise tuition again and again!

Yes, the Chief is why no one cares anymore. Since he left, the world is grey and nasty, Lincoln Hall that much more crumbly, the international students that much more . . . international. Since the Chief is no more, we have all felt the leaden hand of the school administration, keeping instate students down, taking more and more of our money to give to the perfidious "international." Woe, woe is us!

1 comment:

I didn't get to all of them, but I was really impressed by how few of the comments to that were of the embarrassing quality I've come to expect from the DI. Maybe it's because people who are intelligent and engaged, or like to think of themselves that way, were most likely to be insulted by that piece. I don't think it's hard to imagine why they don't normally trouble themselves to comment.

It probably goes without saying, but the DI editorial board has an outrageously inflated sense of its own engagement in campus issues, even if it is a little shocking that no one at all showed up to comment. These people get paid to show an interest in issues affecting the university-- and even so, as one commenter pointed out, the Tribune scooped them in their own backyard. The caliber of their own writing staff should have been a heads-up, in most cases. And as an additional perk for showing some interest in the workings of the university for pay, they're in a position to also be paid for their (usually uninformed) opinions on the very issues they insult their readers for caring about.

It's a little sadder than the Chief guy, actually-- I saw a minimal exoskeleton in the comments, and critical mass in the editorial.